a little bit of perspective...
I do not like New Years, I have never understood the hype or the obsession with staying up until midnight to celebrate that another year has past.
It has been used for too many years as an excuse for everyone to get drunk and pretend that the year has been amazing and that they will change everything about themselves by this time next year... I do not understand it at all.
However this morning I read Ephesians 3 and Psalm 71 and I felt a shift inside.
A shift inside that said, stop focusing on last year, on the last few months when thinks may not have been so easy....
"start seeing the world how i see it, start seeing me as i am and not as you make me, start seeing yourself as i see you and not as you think you should be or how you think other people see you"
Ephesians 3 talks about Jesus and about how He is revealed through the church, it talks about the great things that God has planned and the way in which he can do more than we could imagine.
Psalm 71 talks about God being our hope, about him reaching down and taking us out of the messy places, about him comforting us and sustaining us.
I am an ENFP and I have a tendency to let emotions run wild within me and take over.
I tend to let them be the guide in what I do, in how I react and therefore sometimes I loose perspective.
I loose perspective about who I am and why I do what I do.
I loose perspective and begin to believe the lies that are said over me.
I loose perspective of God and make him into something he isn't.
This morning when I read Ephesians 3 and Psalm 71 I realised that my perspectives were wrong.
I was forgetting that
'..you (God) have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, My confidence since my youth, you brought me from my mothers womb...'
'...to know that this love (Jesus love) surpasses knowledge...'
My perspectives were wrong. Life is messy and crap sometimes. A new year does not erase all that has happened or dramatically change who you are...
BUT
God is greater.
God is stronger.
God loves us endlessly and without strings.
God fills us and strengthens us.
He lets us grab hold of Him and cling forever.
He knows us and created us.
He is bigger and wider and more powerful than we could ever know.
That is the perspective I want this year.
I also realised that we change, slowly and surely we change. It is rarely in the dramatic way we want where one day we suddenly wake up different.
But we are slowly moulded by the King of Heaven and if I look back- if anyone looks back- on their year, we can see how things have changed. Our hearts have grown or been healed. Our perspectives and ideas have developed and matured. We become more who we are and hopefully closer to our King.
New Years are good things I guess because we can give everything afresh to God and say
"Take this year and keep moulding me and shaping me into you!
Keep changing and developing my dreams and desires until they become like yours.
Keep drawing me close and teaching me your ways.
Have all of me Lord. "
So here's to 2013 and all the adventures and things to come.
May it be a God filled time with new revelations of who He is.
Happy New Year
are two beautiful articles that helped me see all of the above.